Every year is Beckenbauer’s year, but 2006 is more so than usual. The man who won the football World Cup as a player, another as a manager, and a third as a campaigner when he snagged this year’s event for Germany, is now organising the tournament.

As he resumes his global odyssey to charm every country taking part in the World Cup, at home, his role in Germany’s psyche keeps expanding. Franz Beckenbauer towers over today’s Federal Republic, bigger than its footballers or intellectuals or chancellors. And he is slowly becoming football’s mightiest politician.

Beckenbauer is a phoenix from Nazi Germany’s ashes, born in a bombed-out Munich in September 1954. His father worked in the post office. His mother died only recently aged 92. Franz started as an insurance agent and a part-time footballer with Bayern Munich.

Soon he became a free-ranging defender and Germany’s greatest footballer. Beckenbauer ran with his head up, his back straight, with such elegance that few opponents dared to tackle him.

Off the field, he represented the ambitious Federal Republic. He married young and took lessons in the art of public speaking. He always tried to ally himself with the mighty, but he also always had charm – looks, wit and a lightness of touch. At 20 Beckenbauer was already plugging soup on television. In 40 years since, his omnipresence in advertisements has made him practically the collective face of German business.

When the Federal Republic hosted its first World Cup in 974, Beckenbuer began as German captain and soon unofficially took over the coach’s job. During the tournament he made a shift to more ‘realistic’ football, reshuffled the team, and ended up lifting the trophy in his home town.

The great player became a great manager. In 1986 he coached Germany to the World Cup final. His team played ugly, battling ‘realistic’ football and during their matches the eye was drawn to the figure of Beckenbauer, posed beside his dugout in his check trousers. Germany lost to Argentina. As coach, he always carefully distanced himself from his teams, so that their shortcomings could not tarnish his reputation.

In 1990 Franz Beckenbauer did win Germany another World Cup.

Again as manager he produced ‘realistic’ football rather than the elegant game he had played himself. On that magical night in Rome, while his players went bananas, Beckenbauer strolled alone across the pitch, gold medal around his neck, gazing about him like a man walking his dog. He was saying goodbye to football.

But he soon returned in his third incarnation as football politician. Again he ‘won’ a World Cup. Nothing can damage Beckenbauer in Germany now – not even his constant contradictory comments to the nearest microphones. He no longer has to court Germany’s mighty, because they now queue to court him. In a country tired of upheaval, he represents a reassuring continuity.

This summer he will be presenting Germany to the World. Beckenbauer is still the Germany that wins with a smile. Only when criticized does he lose his cool.

Franz Beckenbauer is outgrowing Germany. Next year he may stand for president of Europe’s football association, UEFA. If he stands he will surely win. He always does. As the only official popular with European fans, he would be quite a force.

Soon his nickname of Kaiser may require an upgrade to something grander.